This game was notable because it was a continuation of similar issues we faced against Northeastern; we just ran into an opponent who punished us worse. There were woes across the board and this is going to be a Cuts focusing mostly on problematic areas as a result. Memphis pressured us, sped us up, played good both team and individual offense and physical/intentional defense. They had a game plan and they executed it; culminating in a stretch over the last 1/4th of the game where they blew the doors off of the thing.
From the initial reactions/takes after the game (this is longer form reaction, so I get to consider those things) there seemed to be a bit of a general inability to digest what we saw. There was the return to the reminder of CTB after the Blue/White scrimmage that this is a young team that’s going to learn lessons over the course of the season; there was blame of individual players; there was marveling at Memphis’s physicality and age and how they took us out of the game; and there was suggestion that the scout is out there on us and we’ve been “figured out.” Having spent a lot of time watching and re-watching and digesting this game, then re-visiting the Northeastern game, and some of the games right before the exam break, my hope is to pluck the kernels of truth out of each of these narratives to put the bigger picture together. How worried should we be right now about the prospects of this team and why/what’s causing the current funk? That’s what I’m going to postulate on for the next chunk of time below (and apologies in advance, as there’s no sound for these – but sometimes that makes it easier to see what’s going on).
I wrote on social media the other day that player form is variable and not static; and that’s the single biggest change for us right now, in my opinion. Teams are going to change the way they play certain players, guys are going to get banged up and be fighting through that, guys are going to get hot and cold and play with varying levels of confidence – this is all part of the standard lifecycle of a season. The issue for us is that, because we’re playing with such little experience, because Harris is hurt and Minor has yet to be a factor, because Gertrude, Bond, and Buchanan have a lot still to learn about playing at this level, we haven’t, yet, found a good pressure valve for when multiple of our best and most experienced players aren’t playing well. And that’s what’s happening right now: Isaac McKneely, Andrew Rohde, and Ryan Dunn, all returned from the exam break in considerably worse form (to different degrees) than they were playing prior to. It absolutely wasn’t Memphis just being more physically imposing – they looked similar against Northeastern – and it wasn’t just those two teams changing the way they play us (although there is some of this, which we’ll see), because most of the season they’ve made many of the plays that were available to them on Tuesday. We’re going to talk about what I mean around these three guys – and then go from there into some things Memphis was specifically doing and discuss some alternatives.
Isaac McKneely
This will be the shortest section in general because Isaac McKneely is in a shooting slump. He went into the break almost shooting 60% from three and has gone 2-11 over the last two, 0-5 against Memphis. No one’s playing McKneely differently (although NCCU lost tabs on him in transition entirely too much). All year teams have plastered to him and attempted to keep him off of the three-point line, forcing him to beat them off of the dribble. Despite this, when he did get those opportunities (and you’d have liked him to take more), he was cash. And he got several of those looks on Tuesday that he was making with confidence earlier in the year. Here are a couple:
And here:
These are good catch and shoot looks for McKneely. Sure, there’s a contest and Memphis is long, but neither of these contests are nearly as intrusive as plenty of shots he’s hit earlier in the season. For McKneely, these are quality shots that he was making previously and just hasn’t been recently. That’s variance – and he was bound to regress to the mean from 58%, but 0-5 from him is pretty rare. I wouldn’t expect this element to be a continued long-term problem, especially if he can get some confidence back against Morgan St. and build on that headed into conference play. But, as for the Memphis game, not having McKneely’s three-point offense was a blow.
What has been true of McKneely all year is that he’s struggled to create off of the dribble and he’s struggled shooting from two. Last season in 21.5 minutes off of the bench, McKneely had a FG% of 42.3% on 5.5 attempts from the floor while shooting 39.2% from three on 4 attempts per game. This season, his FG% has held pretty similarly at 42.9% on 9.1 attempts from the floor but he’s shooting 50% from three on 5.5 attempts per game. For those doing the math at home – his FG% has flipped – he shot 50% from two last year and 39.2% from three, and he’s shooting 32.4% from two this year and 50% from three. The reason is because he’s taking a lot more shots like this:
Can he make that shot? Sure he can. But that’s a bad shot. We’re on a mini 8-2 run here clawing back into the game after a brutal start, over half of the shot clock is still there, he’s got the mismatch, but he’s taking an isolation long step back two-point jumper.
I’ve spotlighted this before, but a lot of his pull-up mid-range jumpers just aren’t great shots unless they’re late in the shot clock. He can make them and sometimes does – but they don’t draw contact, he hasn’t been making them at a good clip, and he’s honestly just better pulling up from father away. McKneely takes more of these when we’re pressing offensively, but the good news is that this has been pretty consistent all year. Yes, as an added element of growth to his game, I want him to be more successful taking the ball all the way into the hoop rather than settling for so many of these mid-range shots. I do hope that he tries to do that more and takes these less as the season progresses, but our offense has had plenty of games (like Florida, Texas A&M as examples) where he has struggled to score inside of the arc and the offense has still played better and looked more comfortable.
For McKneely, I think the answer is certainly to keep shooting when he’s open from outside. The shots have come at a clip of 5.5 per as it stands. We should scheme him a lot more intentional looks to get him going from out there rather than hoping they’ll from within the flow of our traditional offenses. We’ve done this a little, but really not a lot considering how we used to do this for Kyle Guy. That’s the big coaching change I’d like to see – the old elevator screens, the deviations from the offensive norm, etc. I would like to see him break off curls to the mid-range less frequently unless he’s really just wide open. Far fewer step back jumpers in general, especially from inside the arc. When he does get those clean rubs on curl screens around the elbow, more frequently try to take that all the way in and either draw a foul or dish if someone else is open; but I’m not considering this to be something that he’ll will be able to do a ton of successfully this year. I don’t think he’s developed enough in that way yet, nor do I think we need him to in order to be good enough on offense this year. Basically, I think Isaac McKneely is going to work himself out.
Now the question remains – what do you do when he’s as cold as he was Tuesday and is being as bothered by the other team’s pressure (more on this) as he was? Is he someone that’s a must to have out there over 30 mpg? In his case, I think the answer is just, “yes.” We’ve covered this previously, but his defense is solid to good. You never know when he’ll heat up, and his mere presence out there has forced teams to constantly account for him and provides a lot of spacing that we’re often struggling to get elsewhere. In fact, oddly, in his 32 minutes Tuesday we were -15, compared to even Reece’s 33 minutes where we were -22. Now, that’s not an indictment on Reece because he played really well all things considered, and we’re going to talk more about how Memphis targeted him later – but this was, by all accounts, a terrible game for McKneely on the offensive end and that 8 minutes when he was off the floor went a lot worse (on a per minute basis) than when he was out there. I think the fact of the matter is, unless McKneely stops defending at the level he’s been able to, or unless teams stop defending him as they have been, he’s too valuable either as a long-distance assassin, or just a decoy, to pull off the floor for long. Just don’t charge him with many primary ball-handling responsibilities against athletic teams (more on this later), and let’s reign in the inefficient looks from two.
Andrew Rohde
I think the Andrew Rohde conversation has been misattributed a bit. I’ve been seeing a lot of discussion like he’s been bad all season that seem to have overlooked how whenever we were playing our best basketball (Florida, Texas A&M, Syracuse), Rohde was a key part of that and was playing very well. From what I’ve seen, Rohde has been solid to fine most of the season, perhaps a little underwhelming as a scorer, but as a great passer, quality secondary ball handler, a very good defender, and someone who will still stretch out a defense (shooting 35% before the break with some challenging looks among those). If you read my pieces on Texas A&M and Syracuse, Rohde was starting to really come into his own in the absence of Dante Harris. His increased number of touches had him playing with more confidence as a scorer on the offensive and his knowledge of the Pack Line seemed to improving and he was playing both very good team and on-ball defense. In fact, not to be overly harsh (but it also shows the hidden value he was bringing as well), I believe the single biggest reason our quality of play over the past two games has dipped so significantly is because Andrew Rohde’s been a shadow of his pre-exam break self. Not fully. His assist numbers have actually been up – reaching 6 in the Northeastern game (tying his season high) and getting 4 in the Memphis game. But that’s largely because he’s looked so much less mobile and so much less comfortable hunting his own scoring.
But, unlike McKneely, when Rohde’s playing like he was on Tuesday… you really can’t play him. Not only was he shut out in both games, going 0-5 from the floor in each, not only was it easy to hound him because the threat of getting beaten off of the dribble was almost non-existent, but Memphis was less worried about him shooting from outside, and his defense has been just terrible. In fact, Taine Murray, who is definitely the worst guard/wing defender on the team when everyone is healthy, was defending better than Rohde on Tuesday. By five full points, Rohde was a team worst -27 on Tuesday in BP/M and he only played 22 minutes. For perspective, we were outscored by 1.23 points per minute when Rohde was on the floor which is almost .4 points per minute worse than our next closest player (Dunn).
Here’s a look at some of the defensive leaks that were coming as a result of his play. This first clip, we’ll see him simply get taken off of a quick cross-over, get away with a hand-check, and cede the bucket to Taine Murray’s man when he is drawn to help:
This is him, below, on a baseline inbounds play where he just doesn’t help Reece with the pin down screen at all, instead staying on his own man. When his man sets the back screen on Reece, he both needs to be communicating and sagging back himself to help make sure that the cutter isn’t wide open. He doesn’t, and the cutter is, resulting in an easy layup. It’s Beekman’s man, but this is almost all on Rohde.
And this last clip, below, shows how intentional Memphis was putting both Rohde (and Groves) in the pick and roll. Watch how when they bring the ball up the floor, McKneely is on the primary ball handler. They pass the ball to Rohde’s man and McKneely and Rohde switch it, allowing McKneely to stick on the ball-handler. So, recognizing this, Memphis goes right back to Rohde’s man again, this time finally getting him in the pick and roll defense with Groves hedging. Jahvon Quinerly (#11) on Memphis exploits the matchup, splits the hedge, and drives down the center of the lane. This draws help and eventual rotations around the outside again to yield another easy drive down the lane (accentuated by a cute moving screen on Groves) – but the whole incremental advantage and capitalization was possible because of how badly Quinerly got past Rohde.
I pinpointed this against Northeastern as well, so I’m not going to spend much more time harping on this now. But even the first bucket of the game was just a blown coverage because Rohde had issues getting over a screen and getting back into the play.
He’s clearly not 100% right now and, while I want to caution people from labeling him or giving up on him, because I do think a healthy Rohde is important to have in the starting lineup (or at least playing starter’s minutes). It’s hard to say when that will be without knowing more and because he’s still playing on it/through it. On the highest ceiling versions of our team, he’ll play a lot, when he’s healthy. But, until then, we have to be willing to get away from him. Rest him, play him scarcely, lean on some of these other younger, possibly less comfortable, options. But no one on the team hurt us or struggled as much as he did against Memphis, and we simply can’t treat him as indispensable when he’s in this form/health. More on alternatives to come.
Ryan Dunn
By all accounts, Ryan Dunn had a respectable stat line. He finished with 11 points, 11 rebounds (8 on the offensive glass!), 2 blocks, and 2 steals… but he was 5-14 from the floor, and 1-3 from the FT line, and Memphis played him like they simply couldn’t care less if he shot a jumper, which had a negative impact everywhere else. Candidly, it looks like he’s in his own head offensively, because he does not look comfortable shooting or like a threat to create anything on his own. Furthermore, I think he’s starting to press a bit on the defensive side; not sure of the reason for it, but his desire to make the splash play has caused him to be unsound much more than he was earlier in the season. Let’s start with the offense which is the much bigger issue for us, and then I’ll just touch on what I mean on the defensive side.
Offense
This is one of the first offensive possessions in the game (the second) – so it clearly had nothing to do with how he was playing and entirely to do with the Memphis scouting report. Dunn is being guarded here by 6’9″ Nickk Jourdain (#2) on Memphis. We’re running our Outside Triangle offense at first with Groves and Dunn on the wings and Rohde, Beekman and McKneely in the mix. McKneely switches with Groves, though, who dives to the nearside block. Beekman throws a pass to Dunn on the wing at 6 seconds into the clip and he has the ball by 7 seconds. Watch how Jourdain plays this. He pinches in on Groves early so the pass has no chance of going there from Beekman. Then when the ball goes to Dunn, he’s just giving so much buffer. This would be an easy opportunity for Dunn to take a shot from three if he was so inclined, but he’s clearly not. Instead, Dunn REALLY wants to get this ball into Groves in the post, but Jourdain is having none of it, continually sagging deeper and deeper until Dunn forces it anyway basically passing it right to Jourdain for a far too easy steal.
This highlights the problem, is the single biggest way that the scouting report is catching up with us, and also marks, in my opinion, where we’re going to need to biggest area of in-season growth from a player. The goal of this play (to give the ball to Groves in the post) was dead on arrival because of how little Memphis respected Dunn’s outside jumper. Now, they weren’t wrong, and we’re about to see the struggle he’s having with his shot momentarily, but Ryan is going to have to be proactive on a play like this to force opposing teams to guard him. In lieu of him getting to a point where he just takes this shot and sinks the open 3, he’s got to start being able to use this space to get some momentum driving toward the rim. He’s an incredibly athletic guy with a better handle than he had last year and can be very dangerous with a head of steam in a straight line. In that clip above, I’d love to see him take a couple of dribbles with the left hand quickly toward the lane, eat up the space between himself and Jourdain, and force him to react, foul, pass the ball to a cutter, make a layup, something of the sort. But if throughout the remainder of the season Dunn is neither confident shooting from outside nor is willing to attack the rim off of the bounce, we’re going to struggle offensively when he’s in the game.
Here’s a look just two possessions later where he does attempt a wide-open look and misses badly. This starts to show you how Memphis was playing Reece, as he takes a would-be ball screen (actually doesn’t get a rub) from Groves and beats his man into the paint. If you freeze this clip at 3-4 seconds, this is basically the entire Memphis defensive strategy in a nutshell. They stay plastered to both Groves and McKneely and look how insanely aggressively they leave Rohde and Dunn. Rohde’s man has sagged full into the driving lane to cut off Reece’s dribble, and Dunn’s man isn’t really even needed there, but he’s fully under the hoop… I guess just in case. Beekman can kick it to either Rohde or Dunn in either corner here… the problem is that neither are good shooting options (at least right now, Rohde would have been fine to pass to before the break).
It’s a play that works incredibly well – we just don’t execute it because Dunn has seemingly lost confidence in his shot.
We then move Dunn into the mix, where he actually doesn’t play that often, but right out of the gate a diagonal back-screen from Beekman works wonders and Rohde hits him for a pass for what should be an easy layup, but he’s too strong with the ball.
This play, perhaps above all others, makes me think that Dunn is struggling mentally at the moment. He’s not going to get many more easy looks than that this season against good competition. He was pulled shortly after this and we started to get back into the game right afterward.
Later in the game, despite the fact that he was able to convert some assisted layups, we still saw possessions like this one. Watch how far Jourdain sags off of Dunn the entire possession. When Dunn has it, again, he makes no effort to shoot or drive despite the large cushion, and Bond shouldn’t have tried to squeeze that pass into Groves anyway (Groves’s man was also on it), but Jourdain was also right there to get a hand on it because he really wasn’t worried about getting out to contest.
This just has the effect of gunking everything up in the middle of the floor and eliminating space to work.
And this next one is the last I’ll show from Dunn’s offense. All kinds of suboptimal stuff going on here. We inbound the ball and get into the Triangle with Dunn on the near wing. His man is, again, sagging off of him, and when he passes to Bond cutting, Bond has the inside edge on his man, but Dunn’s defender is right there to deter and force him back to the middle. Bond spins back and shoots a turnaround jumper, which both Memphis defenders try to block, leaving Dunn to crash freely from the wing for the rebound. He catches the ball in the lane with a much shorter player directly on him and two other Memphis players in the vacinity. Rather than either kicking it back out for the offense to reset, or attempting to get something on the put back going toward the rim/drawing contact, he spins away from his defender and shoots a wild fadeaway drifting back to the free throw line, which he airballs.
This one kind of encapsulates everything going on and puts an exclamation point on the needed change. His presence on the wing made life harder for the Bond and, despite the advantage he created through good hustle crashing the glass, he was far too timid with his shot selection once he got the ball. I’d really like to see Ryan collect this rebound, spin back toward the hoop, and try to finish on the right-hand side of the rim over the smaller players. When CTB talks about playing with toughness (both mental and physical), opting to go fadeaway here is a good example. There were other looks where, through circumstances, he’d get a smaller player on him on the block and pass out rather than attempting to score.
Basically, this team needs Ryan Dunn on the floor and needs his defense. Even with what we’re about to see, he’s WAY too valuable on that end to go anywhere. While I still want him taking some threes, I’m not sold that a big uptick in shooting percentage is coming there. But what I DO want to see him doing is attacking on offense. Pressure the rim off of offensive rebounds and off of the bounce. Try to get in close and use his good finishing skills/draw contact. He cannot simply hang out on the wing and allow his man to sag and interfere with the rest of our offense. And sure, we could play more Sides and more Flow to compensate, but this Outside Triangle had been our best way to consistently allow Beekman to get into the paint and McKneely, Groves and (healthy) Rohde to get clean looks from outside. It will be detrimental if we have to get away from that (or run it far less effectively) when he’s on the floor.
It’s time to believe in himself and to force the issue a bit.
Defense
As I mentioned, we’re still one of the best defensive teams in the country (3rd best in adjusted defense, per Kenpom, as of this post), and Ryan Dunn is one of the two biggest reasons for that (and he probably isn’t #2). But, I will say that he started to lose his discipline at times on Tuesday in ways that were unnecessary and seemed to come from pressing to make something happen. Just a couple of quick examples of what I mean:
Now, in this first clip, Dunn is so rangy he almost blocks this shot from behind but, specifically, he bites hard on both shot fakes from Memphis’s David Jones (#8), allowing him to get around him and get to his pull-up game. Really, if Dunn stayed home here and was comfortable settling contesting an outside shot rather than lunging to try to block each fake, he’d have been fine. It’s a big of a shame because Dunn was a good thought and likely could have been an effective answer to Jones in this game, but he got outfoxed and was overly aggressive during some of the moments he was on him.
This next clip, below, was an inopportune time to be overly aggressive. We’d pulled to within 3 as the end of the half neared, and this was the defensive possession right before McKneely got steamrolled (which we’ll see later). Murray gets beaten baseline and Dunn is right there for great help defense. All he has to do is go straight up here and that’s likely the same bad miss that it was. Instead, he floats into the shooter’s space while swiping down violently with his hand, attempting to block the shot. More discipline defensively here and we have a chance to tie the game after such a rough opening. *Note – turns out the foul was actually called on Taine here – my mistake. I still think the broader point is relevant on this clip, though.
Finally, this is a clip of him just having a little too much confidence in his shot blocking. He’s beaten on the first step on the drive and is trailing the play. Memphis lands a shot fake, pivots out of it and Dunn goes sailing past, completely taking himself out of the play and allowing the easy bucket. This one’s pretty uncharacteristic of Dunn as he’s caught a little off guard on the drive and then is too aggressive thinking he’ll be able to block the attempt, getting burned in the process.
None of this is to say that Dunn isn’t still a great and highly impactful defender still – he absolutely is and we need him on the floor if we hope to maintain our early season defensive dominance. I do think he’s pressing too hard to try to make these splash plays, either because he’s had so much success previously or, more likely in my opinion, in an attempt to compensate because he isn’t feeling comfortable offensively and is still trying to impact the game.
Hopefully over this break Dunn will find a way to get out of his head a bit, and begin to play more naturally and aggressively on offense, leading him to reclaim his form as a full-on (sound) defensive terror. Again, Morgan St. should be a good opportunity for him to tinker.
Memphis’s Pressure
So, we’ve talked now about how many of our best players are out of form at the moment, but let’s look at how Memphis’s pressure exacerbated our problems. They preyed on both Rohde and McKneely’s ball-handling, making anyone bringing the ball up the floor other than Reece an unhappy adventure. Furthermore, they sped up some of our younger guys, most notably Gertrude, forcing him into some rookie mistakes that kept CTB’s leash on him relatively short. Let’s take a look at some of the impact:
This is the play that I referenced earlier where McKneely gets steamrolled and they don’t call anything. And we can sit here and be upset that this wasn’t called, but the truth is, when a player is getting hounded like this and the ball has been initially deflected, the refs are much more likely to treat it like a loose ball situation, which typically swallows the whistle much more often when players are diving after the ball. It was a rough play for a couple of reasons – for one, the game was still close and it hurt momentum going into the half. Secondly, Beekman was on the floor and we didn’t have him come back to bring the ball up the floor. While I get and appreciate that we’ll go away from this from time to time so as to limit his exertion, watching McKneely, injured Rohde (who should probably be the second option for this when he’s healthy), and Gertrude attempt to navigate this was tough. Not only was progress slow and dicey, it lead to a few big and costly moments like this that helped Memphis turn defense into offense.
I don’t mind McKneely bringing the ball up the floor in most games, but when we’ve got a team as athletic as Memphis who are making a concerted effort to press all game, I’d like to see us turn to Reece as long as he’s on the floor.
Here’s a different look with Rohde bringing the ball up the floor. McKneely turns the ball over again and it’s an unforced turnover (aside from the mental wear of the constant pressure), but this is all kinds of disjointed. Rohde is just having to work, the ball is vulnerable a couple of times, it’s slow sledding/progress up the floor, and when he first gets it to McKneely, it’s back at the logo in extended pressure position with 11 full seconds already off the shot clock. McKneely passes to Buchanan, Memphis overplays Beekman on the wing, so he goes back to McKneely. As the turnover happens, Rohde is far too casual attempting to get to the ball and Memphis swoops in behind him for the break and the easy bucket.
This is a great clip to highlight just how much their press was disrupting our ability to initiate anything, again, especially with Reece playing on the wing. This kind of mistake by Rohde, at the end, likely comes just from mental and physical fatigue of dealing with the harassment and briefly letting up at an inopportune time.
Now, we did try Gertrude as an answer to this, and I think in a non-Harris world, he probably is our best option because of his quickness/athleticism, but his handle was still a little loose and Memphis was able to speed him up and get him to make some bad decisions. Let’s take a quick look at some of Gertrude navigating the press:
Here’s just a quick look early that didn’t result in a turnover but could have with a Memphis defender in the right spot on the other side of the floor and did eat time for the possession. We’ve just gone on an 11-2 run here before this and, once again, Beekman is in the game and just runs up the floor to let Elijah handle the pressure. And you can see the capability here, as Elijah pulls off a nifty behind the back dribble that loses his man entirely, but as he slows up to try to set the offense, Memphis continues to pressure and is able to hit the ball from behind on his high dribble. Elijah has to marry sound fundamentals with his explosiveness here.
Here he is again, later, and you see the potential. Where as McKneely and Rohde are working in over-drive just to get a little space and get the ball across half court, Gertrude has the ability to blow by his man. He does so here, getting entirely past the Memphis defender and all the way into the lane. He misses the finish, though, in traffic, and the ball goes the other way. Hustling back, the ball ends up in Gertrude’s hands again, and he has Beekman running ahead in a 2-on-1 (kind of 2-on-2) situation, but he just under-estimates the Memphis defender’s athleticism and ability to get to the pass, turning it over.
CTB is going to see this, see Elijah is getting sped up, and dislike the pace against Memphis who is trying to achieve this. I agree. BUT, this is also good experience for Elijah and will help him refine his skills/decision-making. The headliner for me is just HOW capable he is of beating VERY athletic Memphis defenders when they pressure him – his decisions just need to catch up to his ability.
Last look at Eli vs. pressure, below. He hustles back here and gets the rebound, but this is just him trying to get a little too cute against the pressure. He tries to draw a foul against a man getting back on defense and, in so doing, puts the ball too far away from his body a bit carelessly. This allows another Memphis player also getting back to get in for a clean steal, which leads to a drive where Gertrude has to foul.
Elijah Gertrude only played 11 minutes in this one, very likely because of these kinds of plays. He was just a little too reckless with the ball at times for CTB’s comfort level. But he also made some good drives, played some good defense, and showed that he is capable of creating advantages when defenses over-extend. In games like this, especially when we’re already down almost 20, I’d like to stick with him out there and help him get more experience in these situations. Honestly, given Rohde’s limitations in this game, I think you have to take the risk/reward of having a player like Eli on the floor more often in a game like this.
Doubling Reece
Now this was eye opening. It wasn’t an area of the floor – Memphis just made the decision, especially starting late in the first half and into the second, to proactively double team/trap Reece Beekman when he had the ball. The goal of playing like that is certainly to create turnovers, but the primary goal was just to get the ball out of Beekman’s hands and to force someone else to beat them. Clearly, Memphis did not think that the rest of our team could punish their cheating, and they were mostly correct.
Here’s a first good look – watch as soon as Beekman gets the ball on the wing, Memphis sends two guys. This leads to a wide-open Leon Bond, but Memphis is able to rotate over with quick hands and deflect the ball out of bounds. At the very least, Bond should have been able to draw a foul here, bringing the ball down too low so that it could be poked out.
And here you see Memphis immediately gravitate toward the trap once he gets the ball over half court. The ball goes to Groves in the corner who finds Rohde on a good look for a completely open three, which he misses. Notice how, by forcing the ball out of Beekman’s hands, Memphis does succeed in speeding our offense up – by basically just giving us a good look but we can’t capitalize. This is an illustration of Rohde struggling on the offensive side.
This is just straight out of the inbound, Reece goes to get the ball, Memphis traps. He finds Dunn who whips a nice pass to an open Taine in the corner, but he gets his three-pointer blocked.
Here you get a great glimpse at how much they wanted to over play Beekman. Watch the ball go out to Dunn at the point. Memphis has one player standing with his back to Dunn, completely trying to ball-deny Beekman, and Dunn’s man is a good quarter of the court sagged off of him, making sure Beekman isn’t going to make a back cut. We work the ball around a bit non-threateningly, until Beekman makes a cut to get the ball, still out by the logo, with about 9 seconds left on the shot clock. Not the difference in Memphis’s ball pressure on Beekman vs. our other players. As Beekman sets up to drive, Bond’s man sags off of him entirely, trying to clog the driving lane to the left. When Beekman drives to the right, Dunn’s man leaves him and Bond’s leaves him entirely, creeping up from the back side to steal the ball. This is just a glaring look at how focused they became on not letting Beekman beat them and how willing they were to ignore some of our other players to help on him.
And finally, one more, with Reece bringing the ball up the floor. Watch how much attention he’s getting. Memphis fakes sending the double once, and then does send it after he crosses half court. They rotate on the back end and Murray/Dunn are both too close together and both decide to try to cut toward the middle of the floor rather than spreading to get space. Ideally you’d want one (probably Dunn) cutting to the hoop with Murray staying outside of the three-point line. Both dive and Beekman passes it out of bounds.
Now, I don’t think many teams will be this aggressive about doubling Reece, primarily because they won’t be as athletic on the back end to cover the rotations as well. The block on Taine’s three was impressive. But, very notably and concerningly, they just weren’t worried about our non-Reece players punishing these rotations and so often they were rewarded. Plus, they did take Reece out of the game as a scorer – in the first half he had 11 and was a big force for keeping us in the game. In the second half, he had just two, and really couldn’t get going at all (because you can’t when you’re so consistently 1-on-2.
All of these other points I’ve made above about Dunn needing to be more aggressive, Rohde needing to get healthy, Gertrude seeing time, etc. – all philosophically relate to needing to beat this concept of cheating to stop Reece.
What Worked?
Not a ton – but there were glimpses that we need to see more from. I’m going to show two offensively and two defensively.
This first clip is with Taine Murray on the floor – who played 18 minutes on the game, including a large chunk of time at the end of the first half while we were getting back into the game. Now, I haven’t spent a lot of time focused on Taine this season, despite the fact that there’s apparently at least a small undercurrent of fans who believe that he should be much more involved. Until Rohde’s injury, Murray has obviously been our worst perimeter defender at the guard/wing position this year (and you can see it in other clips in this game). He also hasn’t offered much on the offensive end when he’s been in… other than spacing. But, occasionally, he does show an ability to get downhill effectively and either make a pass in traffic or get a shot up at the rim. He doesn’t do this very often, but he had his prettiest play of the season right here, as he gave a shoulder-shake to the right, got downhill quickly into the lane, and then found Groves who made a smart cut to the rim with a pretty bounce pass.
Now I show this clip for a couple of reasons. For one, while Rohde is playing as he is, maybe there is a role for Taine right now. When healthy, I don’t think there’s much of anything Rohde doesn’t do better than Murray, aside from potentially knocking down wide-open threes. But, as of right now, Murray is actually defending better and represents better spacing on the floor. He’s probably making (or at least has a better chance of making) that open look we saw Rohde miss earlier when Reece was doubled. I’m not advocating for large chunk minutes here, I’m highlighting my shift in opinion where I typically don’t see much of a role for Taine when our roster is healthy, to saying that it’s probably better to lean more into him as long as Rohde is still mending.
Secondly, and most importantly, this is the move we need from our wings. We need Dunn and Bond to make this move; ideally, McKneely even makes this move. It’s nothing fancy – simply a shoulder fake and then getting north to south quickly and looking for a pass or a finish. Gertrude had a play like this earlier for a layup after a nice pump fake. This is all we need from the guys holding down the fort out here on the wing so that defenses don’t cheat. Nothing fancy, a couple of quick dribbles, touch the paint, make a decision with the ball. Dunn can (and should) do this much more often than he has been to keep defenses honest.
Okay, here’s a different offensive look with Leon Bond at the three, and I highlight this because I’ve asked for it since very early in the season but we haven’t seen it often. This is Beekman, Dunn, and Bond in the mix of the Inside Triangle, with Groves and McKneely on the wing. The presence of both Dunn and Groves leaves Bond with a mismatch (although far less pronounced than normal given Memphis’s size/athleticism. They take the opportunity to post Bond, and he hits just the sweetest turn-around jumper.
This is a great way to negate some of the Dunn sagging issues – by keeping him in the mix and around the paint, while also allowing Bond to exploit mismatches when teams have to put opposing threes on him.
Defensively, we’re going to give a couple of looks with more athleticism on the floor. The first is with Beekman, McKneely, Gertrude, Bond, and Buchanan. Bond is at the four here, but I like that he’s complimented with the longer Buchanan and the athletic Gertrude at the three. This helps buffer some of the size he can give up on the glass (especially Gertrude who has proven so effective rebounding out of the guard position). This is just stellar, connected, defense throughout the possession and it culminates in the shotty violache! Memphis stars by forcing a hedge on Buchanan which is probably his strongest area of defense at this point in his career (also a great sign because it’s usually the biggest area of growth for young players). Gertrude does a great job tagging Blake’s man and then getting back out to his, contesting the pump fake without entirely leaving his feet and then recovering on the drive. McKneely sags and recovers to his man, the ball goes into the wing, which Bond contests, then into the post. Buchanan does well to hold up to the physicality in the post and Bond does well to bother the dribble enough to force the pass into the opposite corner. Reece plays great on-ball defense, the ball goes back out to Gertrude’s man, who attempts a wild runner outside of the paint that hits the top of the backboard. REALLY good team defense from this group (compared to a lot of what we saw this game, especially), and very complimentary pieces.
The second clip, below, is with our starters but with Bond at the THREE instead of Rohde. Watch the difference in the suffocation/pressure that we’re applying on this possession. Firstly, Memphis starts out in this three-man screen action that they liked going to. It puts Groves in a situation where he has to recover a lot of ground to get back to his man, but Dunn’s rotation over is solid, Beekman is in the back side defensive position where he’s always dangerous as a roamer, and Groves and Dunn execute a suffocating double-team in the post. McKneely and Beekman do a very good job roaming between the three guys on the back end, before the Memphis player retreat dribbles out of the double and looks for the near pass. That’s not even easy, though, as Bond denies the passing lane and deflects the ball out of bounds.
These defensive sets were much better and much more intrusive because of who was playing and how those players complimented each other. Elijah Gertrude and Leon Bond (especially) were big parts of it.
In Conclusion
This was a unique opponent who had a game plan tailored to beating us with their specific old (and athletic) roster. We did not respond well, compounded by our situational health and youth, but also because of our insistence on playing a player who was really laboring on both sides of the ball.
In terms of our long-term outlook we should get Dante Harris back at some point and Andrew Rohde’s foot should hopefully improve. The biggest area that we’re going to need to see improve is Ryan Dunn finding an offensive identity and finding a way to take the pressure off the rest of the offense, either by improving his shot or, more likely, attacking more off of the bounce and being aggressive toward the rim. Alternatively, we can put him in the mix more in our Triangle offenses and err more toward Sides and/or Flow – but ideally you don’t have such a core player limiting what offenses you have to play.
But in terms of our short-term outlook, there are more coaching adjustments that need to be made. I think we have to stop viewing Andrew Rohde as someone who has to get minutes if he’s playing like this, and we need to be willing to play more Elijah Gertrude and Leon Bond regardless, even through some growing pains (which, honestly, aren’t as impactful as having a player who is struggling to support team defense and isn’t threatening to score). We can’t be open to whoever gets the ball bringing it up the floor in press situations – it needs to be Beekman as much as we can muster and whenever he’s in there, and then I think you have to let Gertrude learn from that type of pressure in mid-game situations (longer term, both Harris and Rohde will be good options here). And, generally, we need to encourage our wings to be willing to attack the paint throughout the game when the opportunity is there and when defenses aren’t playing them honestly. There’s a confidence issue right now across many of our guys (it honestly seems like across everyone except Beekman, Gertrude, Groves, and Bond right now), and we need to empower them to take some chances offensively.
Most of this stuff I think will work itself out as the season ebbs and flows, especially once the schedule becomes more consistent for the young guys and there aren’t this many breaks. But, can Dunn force himself to up his offensive load? Can we break some of our early season consistent rotational tendencies when we need to? Can we increase our collective willingness to make an offensive play, especially when we don’t have all of the options we relied on early? These are things we’ll need to wait to see!
Happy Holidays, everyone! See you after Morgan St.!
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